I just don’t know what it is.
The Lower Hudson Journal News is insistent that it was justified in publishing the database of gun permit holders, and it is undeterred that it will do so if it can obtain databases from additional counties.
Concerns and reports that revealing these identities have subjected police officers, correctional officers, and people with restraining orders to threats and intimidation have not moved the Journal News one inch from its mission. The Journal News publisher insists that because it is able to publish the information, it was justified in publishing the information.
There was retaliation against the Journal News by people publishing information about the Journal News staff, resulting in threats. The Journal News expects empathy, After Pinpointing Gun Owners, Paper Is a Target:
But the article, which left gun owners feeling vulnerable to harassment or break-ins, also drew outrage from across the country. Calls and e-mails grew so threatening that the paper’s president and publisher, Janet Hasson, hired armed guards to monitor the newspaper’s headquarters in White Plains and its bureau in West Nyack, N.Y.
Personal information about editors and writers at the paper has been posted online, including their home addresses and information about where their children attended school; some reporters have received notes saying they would be shot on the way to their cars; bloggers have encouraged people to steal credit card information of Journal News employees; and two packages containing white powder have been sent to the newsroom and a third to a reporter’s home (all were tested by the police and proved to be harmless).
“As journalists, we are prepared for criticism,” Ms. Hasson said, as she sat in her meticulously tended office and described the ways her 225 employees have been harassed since the article was published. “But in the U.S., journalists should not be threatened.”
The Journal News lacks any empathy for the people it has put in harms way, yet wants not to be put in the same harms way.
There’s a psychological term for people who demand empathy but are incapable of giving empathy.
I’m not up to speed on psychological terminology, so help me out here.
My vague recollection of Psych 101 is that the term started with a “J” and …. and … hold on, it’s coming back to me now.
Jour… Journa… I’m going to sound it out loud … Journ — al — lists.
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